Wouldn't it be nice if OpenOffice.org had a bookmarking feature? With one of these, you could bookmark your favorite documents and access them with a couple of mouse clicks instead of wading through directories on your hard disk.

Although you can access previously opened files via the File | Recent documents menu, this feature is too limited to be of real use. Fortunately, you have at least two ways to solve this problem: Either you can use the Bookmarks Menu extension (Figure 1) or you can create your own bookmarking tool using OpenOffice.org Basic.

Figure 1: The Bookmarks Menu extension.

Bookmarks Menu Extension

As the name suggests, the Bookmarks Menu [1] extension allows you to bookmark documents, as well as apply a couple of other tricks, which makes it a really nifty helper tool.

As with most OpenOffice.org extensions, installing Bookmarks Menu is not particularly difficult. Just download the latest version of the extension, then use the Extension Manager in OpenOffice.org (Tools | Extension Manager) to install the downloaded .oxt package.

After installing the Bookmarks Menu extension, you must enable it. To do so, choose Tools | Add-ons | Bookmarks Menu. This adds the menu to the main toolbar and opens the Edit Bookmarks Menu dialog, from which you can add bookmarks and configure menu items.

Wizard

If you are not familiar with Bookmarks Menu, the easiest way to add a bookmark is to use a wizard, which you can launch by pressing the Wizard button.

When you run the wizard, you'll notice that it allows you to bookmark not only documents but also directories and even commands and applications (see Figure 2). To create a bookmark for an application or a command, choose the Execute command option and press the >> button. In the next window, specify the desired command and an optional argument. For example, if you want to bookmark the Firefox browser, enter firefox in the appropriate field.

Figure 2: Using the wizard, you can quickly add a bookmark.

Additionally, you can specify a URL as an input argument (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). This way, the bookmark opens the Firefox browser that then navigates to the Wikipedia page.

Give the bookmark a descriptive name by entering it in the Label field, and press >>. In the next window, press the Test button to make sure the specified bookmark works properly, then press OK. Now you can launch Firefox by choosing the newly created bookmark from the Bookmark menu.

Instead of using the wizard, you can press the New button in the Edit Bookmarks Menu dialog, which gives you access to more advanced features, such as the ability to bookmark macros. This makes Bookmarks Menu a much better alternative for accessing macros than OpenOffice.org's own Tools | Customize feature.

To bookmark a macro, choose Edit Bookmarks from the Bookmark menu and press the New button. Then give the bookmark a name, select Macro from the Type drop-down list, press the Open button, and select the macro you want. To save the new bookmark, press OK, and then you are done.

The Edit Bookmarks Menu window also contains a few tools that can help you to keep tabs on your bookmarks. With the Sub Menu button, you can group your bookmarks into submenus, whereas the Separator button lets you insert a separator line between bookmarks. The Menu button offers the Import Settings and Export Settings commands. As you might have guessed, the latter allows you to export your settings and bookmarks, so you can then import them into the Bookmarks Menu extension on another machine.

If you have a lot of bookmarks and you want to use them on multiple installations of OpenOffice.org, this feature can come in particularly handy.

Creating a DIY Bookmark Manager

Although Bookmarks Menu sports a few clever features, this shouldn't stop you from creating your own bookmarking solution. Going the do-it-yourself way allows you to build a custom bookmark manager that neatly fits your specific needs. Moreover, this provides you with a good opportunity to learn a couple of OpenOffice.org Basic tricks.

In this example, I'll explain how to create a bookmark that uses two macros. The BookmarkDocument macro (see Listing 1) lets you pick the document you want to bookmark and saves its name and path in an OpenOffice.org Base database.

The OpenBookmarks macro (see Listing 2) displays a list of bookmarked documents, and you can open the desired document by selecting it from the list and pressing the Open button. To keep things simple, the bookmark manager handles only word processing documents (.odt and .doc) and opens them in OpenOffice.org Writer, but you can tweak it to include other formats easily.

Before you can start working on the macros, you must create a database containing the "files" table and two text fields: FileName and FilePath. Then save the database as a BookmarkDB.odb file and register it as a data source in OpenOffice.org.

To do the latter, launch OpenOffice.org and choose Tools | Options. Next, select OpenOffice.org Base | Databases and press the New button. Then select the BookmarkDB.odb database and give the new connection the "BookmarkDB" name. After pressing OK twice and creating a dialog called BookmarkDialog (consisting of a listbox and an OK button), you are done.